Integrating with Icinga

Icinga is designed to monitor the availability of network resources and proactively generate alerts about the outages and performances of hosts and services. As a tenant administrator, it's important that you can monitor the connected systems and quickly identify and resolve any issues. The BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations Icinga connector collects events and metrics from Icinga. 

 

Related topics

Editing-and-deleting-integrations

Monitoring BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations

You can view the collected data in various BMC Helix applications and derive the following benefits:

BMC Helix application

Type of data collected or viewed

Benefits

BMC Helix Operations Management

Events

Use a centralized event view to monitor and manage events, perform event operations, and filter events. Identify actionable events from a large volume of event data by processing events.

For more information, see Monitoring events and reducing event noise.

BMC Helix Operations Management

Metrics

Detect anomalies and eliminate false positives. Use alarm and variate policies to detect anomalies through static and dynamic thresholds.

For more information, see Detecting anomalies by using static and dynamic thresholds.

BMC Helix AIOps

Situations
(created from events)

Improve the mean time to resolve (MTTR) based on the situation-driven workflow.

Lower the mean time to detect or discover (MTTD) and the time required for investigating tickets.

For more information, see Monitoring situations.

As a tenant administrator, perform the following steps to configure a connection with Icinga, verify the connection, and view the collected data in various BMC Helix applications.

ConnectorSteps.png

Supported versions

BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations supports version 2.x of Icinga for data collection.​​​​

Task 1: To plan for the connection

Review the following prerequisites to help you plan and configure a connection with Icinga.

Icinga prerequisites

Make sure that the user account that you plan to use while configuring a connection with Icinga has the following permissions:

  • config/query 
  • events/* 
  • objects/query/*
  • status/query 
  • types
  • variables

BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations prerequisites

In the following list, third-party product refers to Icinga.

  • Depending on the location of the third-party product (SaaS, on-premises), choose one or more BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations deployment modes and review the corresponding port requirements. For information about various deployment modes and port requirements, see Deployment-scenarios.
  • Based on the deployment mode, use the BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations SaaS deployment or the BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations on-premises gateway or both. For more information about the gateway, see Deploying-the-BMC-Helix-Intelligent-Integrations-on-premises-gateway.
  • The on-premises gateway must be able to reach the third-party product on the required port (default is 5665).

Task 2: To configure the connection with Icinga

  1. Depending on the deployment mode, perform one of the following steps to access BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations:
    • BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations SaaS – Log on to BMC Helix Portal, and click Launch on BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations.
    • BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations on-premises gateway – Use the following URL to access BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations:
      https://<hostName>:<portNumber>/swpui
  2. On the CONNECTORS  tab, click add_icon.pngin the SOURCES panel.
  3. Click the Icinga  tile.
  4. Specify the source connection details:

    1. Specify a unique instance name.

      Best practice
      We recommend that you specify the instance name in the following format:

      <sourceType>_<sourceControllerServerName>_<InstanceQualifier>

      The instance qualifier helps you distinguish the multiple instances configured from the same source server. For example, you can name your instances as ICINGA_PROD and ICINGA_TEST.

    2. Specify the Icinga host name and port number (default value is 5665).
  5. Click VALIDATE AND CREATE.
    The specified connection details are validated and the corresponding source connection is created in the Source Connection list.

  6. Verify that the source connection you created is selected.

    Important

    The destination host connection is created and configured automatically for each tenant when the source connection is created.

  7. Verify that the options for the data types for which you want to collect data are selected.

  8. Click a data type and specify the configuration parameters in the Collectors section as described in the following table:

    Parameter name

    Description

    Data type

    Icinga Events

    Icinga Metrics

    Collection Schedule

    Select one of the following options to specify the data collection frequency:

    • Duration: When you select this option, data collection happens constantly. Specify the schedule in minutes, hours, or day. 
      Default: 5 minutes
      Example:
      Collection Schedule       is set to 5 mins.
      Current time is 00:30.

       If you run the collector just after 00:30, data is collected every 5 mins, first at 00:30 and next at 00:35, and so on.  

    • Cron schedule: When you select this option, data collection happens periodically. Specify the schedule by using a cron expression.
      A cron expression is a string consisting of five subexpressions (fields) that describe individual details of the schedule.        These fields, separated by blank spaces, can contain any of the allowed values with various combinations of the allowed characters for that field.
      Default: */5 * * * * (evaluates to 5 minutes)

      Format:
      Minutes Hours (24-hour format) Day of Month Month Day of Week

      Example:
      If you specify 10 15 3 7 * , data is collected at 15:10 hours every third day in the month of July.

    For more information about how this parameter affects data collection, see Data collection schedule.

    ✅️

    ✅️

    Subscription Time

    Specify the duration a client (or subscriber) remains connected to Icinga and collects data.

    For example, if Collection Schedule and Subscription Time are set to 5 minutes, after every 5 minutes, the client (or subscriber) connects to Icinga and collects data for 5 minutes.

    Default: 5 minutes 

    Important: The subscription time should not be longer than the collection schedule.

    ✅️

    ✅️

    Service or Host Regex

    Specify the regular expression for the service name. Events and metrics are collected for the services whose names match the regular expression.

    If no service name is received from Icinga, the regular expression is applied to the host name.

    Examples:

    • To collect data for the services that contain the string ping in their names, specify the regex as .*ping.*. 
    • To collect data for the ping service, specify the regex as ping. 
    • To collect the data for the services whose names start with the string ping, specify the regex as ^ping.*. 

    Separate multiple regular expressions by a pipe (|). For example: ping|.*ping*.|^ping.*

    Important:

    • If you are using multiple regular expressions, make sure that the regular expressions are not conflicting.
      For example, do not enter, ^Ping.* and ^(?!Ping$).* together. The former expression collects metrics for the services whose name start with the string Ping, while the latter expression collects data for the services whose name do not start with the string Ping.
    • The default expression for Services or Host Regex is .*. This regular expression collects data for all the services.
    • Do not leave this field blank. Either use the default regular expression or enter a custom regular expression.

    To use the query for applying filters, see To filter the events and metrics by using a query.

    ✅️

    ✅️

  9. Click CREATE COLLECTORS to create the required collector streams for the selected data types.
  10. Click a data type and specify the configuration parameters in the Distributors section as described in the following table:
    Parameter name
    Description
    Max Batching Size
    Specify the maximum number of data items to send in a single POST request to the destination API.
    The batch size     depends on the destination’s ability to buffer the incoming data.Default: 250
    Max Batching Delay
    Specify the maximum time (in seconds) to wait before building and processing a batch.Default: 3 seconds 
    Base Retry Delay
    Specify the initial time (in seconds) for which to wait before retrying to build and process a batch.
    The waiting time increases in the following sequence: n1, n2, n3, and so on, where n indicates the number of seconds.Default: 2 secondsExample:Base Retry Delay is set to 2 seconds.Retry is performed after 2, 4, 8, 16, ... seconds.
    Max Intra-Retry Delay
    Specify the maximum limit for the base retry delay. Default: 60 secondsExample:Max Intra-Retry Delay is set to 60 seconds.
    Base Retry Delay is set to 2 seconds.Retries are performed 2, 4, 8, 16, 32,... seconds later.
    Max Retry Duration
    Specify the total time for retrying a delivery. For REST destinations, a delivery is a batch of data items in one POST request. Default: 5 minutesExample:Max Retry Duration is set to 8 hours.
    Base Retry Delay is set to 2 seconds.Requests are sent for 2+4+8+16+32+64+132... until 8 hours in total duration is reached. After that, no subsequent attempts are made to retry the delivery.The assumption here is that if there is an outage or other issue with the destination tool, recovery should take less than the value of the Max Retry Duration parameter to be completed.
    Attributes To Be Dropped When Updating Events
    Specify the event attributes that you do not want to be updated in BMC Helix Operations Managementwhen events are updated. For example, if you do not want an event's severity, source address, source category, and subcategory to be updated in BMC Helix Operations Management , you need to specify those attributes in a comma-separated format: severity,source_address,source_category,source_subcategory .Important:You can obtain the event attribute names in BMC Helix Operations Management, by exporting any event data in JSON, BAROC, XML, or CSV format . The exported file contains all attributes of the event data, and from there you can identify the attributes to be dropped. 
  11. Click CREATE DISTRIBUTORS to create the required distributor streams for the selected data types.

  12. Click one of the following buttons:

    • SAVE STREAM: Click this button if you want to edit the integration details before creating the instance. After you save the stream, the connector that you just created is listed in the SOURCES panel. Move the slider to the right to start the data stream.
    • SAVE AND START STREAM: Click this button if you want to save the integration details and start receiving data immediately.

    Important
    For a data stream, the Run Latency (max/avg), Items (Avg per Run), and Last Run Status columns on the Streams page might show the status as No Runs during the data collection process. After completion of the process, these columns are updated with an appropriate status.

    For more information about data streams, see Starting-or-stopping-data-streams. 

Task 3: To verify the connection

In BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations, on the SOURCES panel, confirm that the data streams for the integration you created are running. Data streaming is indicated by moving colored arrows.

Icinga_stream.png

  • A moving dark blue arrow (EventsStream_Icon.png ) indicates that the event stream is running. Event data will be pushed according to the configured Collection Schedule interval.
  • A moving red arrow (MetricsStream_Icon.png ) indicates that the metric stream is running. Metric data will be pushed according to the configured Collection Schedule interval.

To view data in BMC Helix applications

View data collected from Icinga in multiple BMC Helix applications.

To view events in BMC Helix Operations Management

  1. In BMC Helix Operations Management, select Monitoring > Events.
  2. Filter the events by the IcingaEvent class.
    Icinga_events_BHOM.png

Incoming events from Icinga are processed in BMC Helix Operations Management through a set of rules to determine whether the incoming event contains the results of the same test on the same node and then processed accordingly. For more information, see Event-deduplication-suppression-and-closure-for-reducing-event-noise.

For information about events, see Monitoring and managing events.

To view metrics in BMC Helix Operations Management

  1. In BMC Helix Operations Management, select Monitoring > Devices.
  2. Click the links for the required device.
  3. On the Monitors tab, click the required monitor.
    The Monitors tab shows the list of service names that are specified in Icinga for service monitoring. Additionally, you can also see Icinga's internal services to monitor host performance.
    The Performance Overview tab shows the metrics graph.
    Icinga_metrics.png

For information about metrics, see Viewing collected data.

Filtering events and metrics data by using a query

In addition to using regex to filter events and metrics data, you can use a query to filter the events and metrics data from Icinga. Queries are helpful when the data being collected might change over a period of time. When you specify a query, data is collected according to the filter conditions specified in the query. For example, you can use the query to collect events for all those services whose state is OK.

Data collected for events changes as soon as the conditions specified in the query are not satisfied. For example, if the state of a service changes to INACTIVE after the data collection interval you have specified, events are not collected.

Use the entityType parameter to specify the entity for which you want to collect data and the filterQueryString parameter to specify the filter query.

Important

  • If filter conditions are provided through query and regex both, BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations uses the filter provided in the query to collect data from Icingaand ignores the regex.  
  • If entry for entityType or filterQueryString is missing, BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations collects data from Icinga using the regex specified.
  • If entityType or filterQueryString has an invalid entry, BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations does not collect any data from Icinga.

To filter events and metrics data by using a query

  1. Click Configure Mediatoricon_gear.png adjacent to Icinga.
  2. Expand the ICINGA EVENTS section to specify the query for events or expand ICINGA METRICS for metrics.
  3. Under the Collector Configuration tab, enable the Edit JSON option.
    You can see the JSON format of collector configuration parameters.
  4. Set the value of the entityType parameter to hosts to collect data for hosts.
    The default value is services.

  1. In the filterQueryString parameter, enter the query to collect data.
    For example, the following query collects events for the services whose state is not ServiceOK, or whose low flapping threshold is greater than or equal to 20:

    {
    "filter":"service.state != \"ServiceOK\" || flapping_threshold_low >= 20"
    }
  2. Click SAVE.
  3. Disable the Edit JSON option.
  4. Click SAVE & CLOSE.

 

Tip: For faster searching, add an asterisk to the end of your partial query. Example: cert*